


Dear Fred, I miss you. -George

by GMRivers



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brother Feels, Brotherly Love, Fred Weasley Dies, Gen, Goodbyes, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Letters, POV George Weasley, Plans For The Future, Sad, Sad with a Happy Ending, Weasley Family-centric (Harry Potter), Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMRivers/pseuds/GMRivers
Summary: In an attempt to get over Fred's death, George Weasley writes a letter to his brother.





	Dear Fred, I miss you. -George

**Author's Note:**

> This little thing has been sitting in my drive for over a year. I wrote it for a school assignment, but the word limit was 600 words, and I had over 900. I had to cut out part of it, which I thought was a shame, so I saved the original and now, with a little bit added and edited, I decided to share it with all of you. Enjoy!

Dear Fred,  
You utter prat. What were you thinking running into danger like that? You have no idea how badly I’m feeling the urge to grab your shoulders and give you a good shake. Why did you have to go and be the hero? You made mum cry. I don’t think you’ve managed to do that since sixth year. Remember that? How she was convinced we were throwing away our potential when we set up the joke shop? The irony here is that if she were given a choice, she’d probably be more than happy to see us working day in and day out on new pranking products.  
  
I almost closed the shop, what with all of the destruction around and the customers being afraid to step out of their houses for fear of a rogue death eater getting to them. Mum stopped me. She said our shop was one of the few symbols of hope we had left. She said she was proud of us, Freddie. She even bought some Canary Creams. Imagine that: Mum pranking someone!  
  
Dear brother, I think you broke mum.  
  
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s good to watch her laugh, even if it’s just a few chuckles at Ron’s expense. I never did tell you about that, did I? Turns out you won the bet. Mum lasted a whole three days of hugs and feeling relieved before it sunk in that Ron had ran away straight into danger without even leaving a note. I’m afraid you’ll have to come collect your winnings yourself. It seems there’s no parcel delivery to where you are. Mum would have sent a howler if there was.  
  
She almost sent one to me last week. Our mother was not happy with me for dyeing my hair. Weasley-red suits me better than brown, according to her. I didn’t have the heart to explain that I kept seeing you out of the corner of my eye whenever I stood next to a window or mirror.  
  
The thing is, I say I’m okay, but I keep slipping up. Turning to say something only to realize there’s no one there beside me. I think mum is starting to notice, she seems worried about me. She’s not the only one. I’m tired of everyone looking at me like I’m going to break into pieces if they even so much as mention your name. Harry is the only one that doesn’t. He doesn’t shy away from speaking about you, and in return I don’t avoid mentioning Remus and Tonks as if speaking their names would kill them all over again. Mum keeps sending us concerned looks whenever something like that happens. We started sneaking away on our own so that we’d be able to talk, but lately she finds excuses to have someone else tag along, and they are not much better at hiding their worried expressions. I tried telling mum that I can’t avoid mentioning you forever. She seemed to take it badly, but i don’t blame her. This last few weeks have been really hard on her. On all of us.  
  
It was dad’s birthday a few day ago, and as always, that means a party. None of us mentioned the extra place set at the table. Or the wrapped gift that still sits below the christmas tree. Or the unfinished jumper with a suspiciously “F” shaped pattern stitched unto it’s front. The color matches the one I got for christmas, just like every year before it. Sometimes, I wish mum hadn’t knitted our initials on them. I can just picture your horrified expression at the wasted prank potential if she hadn’t. The thing is, we did the switching places prank so often that we never even checked if we had the right jumper on anymore. That habit hasn’t faded away. Sometimes, i don’t even realize I’m wearing the wrong jumper until I’m at Diagon and happen to cross paths with an old classmate. Now, if I happen to wear one of your jumpers by accident, they stop, stare, shake their heads and proceed to try and act like nothing happened, while shooting pitying looks in my direction every few seconds. They don’t seem to realize that I wore those sweaters as much as I wore my own, and to see them look at me as though they’ve just seen a ghost bothers me more than I would like. I wish they would stop, but they’re not the ones with the worst reactions.  
  
Percy blames himself. Somehow, because of some twisted logic, he decided that since he was the one fighting beside you, it’s all his fault. Our proud, arrogant, genius of an older brother can’t even look me in the eyes anymore. He tends to avoid even looking at my general direction, and refuses to enter a room if I’m sleeping within it. I once heard him mention that George looked as if he was sleeping too.  
  
Mum spends most of the time staring out a window. The time she spends elsewhere is used cooking, sleeping or eating. Unless she is staring at the family clock instead, making sure we are all safe. You can imagine what it does to her with Charlie’s job and now Ron’s training for the aurors. Dad has barely said a word, at least not as he used to. I don’t think his fascination for the muggle world has disappeared, but he seems… different, more serious.  
  
Charlie is the opposite. He tries too hard. Smiled just a bit too wide when he was asked how he was doing. He is now in Romania with his dragons, but we practically had to push him towards the portkey. He still promised to visit every couple of weeks. Bill is different. Sometimes he is pushy, wanting to be with the family at all times, others he wants to pull away and hole up in his house with his wife. He has Fleur, which helps, but sometimes I can see him holding her hand just a bit too tight, to stop mum from noticing the shaking. It always starts shaking when he thinks about the battle. It only seems to get better when the full moon is near. I guess that you being gone managed to do what a career as a curse breaker couldn’t.  
  
Ron, the bottomless pit, barely eats half his plate at dinner, even with Hermione’s coaxing. He used to be scared stiff of spiders, and he still is, but now he won’t let anyone kill them, just take them outside. We really left a mark on him with that one, brother mine. I guess we really were an unforgettable pair.  
  
Little Ginny… she’s outside most of the time, flying as high and fast as she can. Harry joins her sometimes. They finally got together properly, without all that tension and awkwardness that used to frustrate you so much when you saw them. Too bad you never got your hands on them, they would have fixed their relationship far quicker with one of your plans behind it. You always knew how to manage people, and manipulate them, much better than me.  
  
I wish I had one of your plans with me. Some crafty way of turning everybody back to normal. They need you Freddie. I need you. I keep waiting for you to jump out and scare me as if this were all just a stupid prank. But you can’t. And it sucks. It sucks that our parents seem despondent. It sucks that our siblings keep breaking a little bit more every day. It sucks that instead of healing, we only hid our wounds when the war was finished, and covered them up with medals and celebrations. It’s all a big pile of rubbish. But most of all, I hate that I have to move on. That eventually, I will look in the mirror and see only me, because the thought that it might be you will not even have crossed my mind. I’m scared that by trying to live the life you couldn’t, I will forget about one of the largest pieces of mine.  
  
It’s rubbish, I know. I could never forget you. But there are times when I wish, if only for a second, that I could. I think those have been the hardest moments for me. When I feel so pushed down, so drowned, by the darkness in the world, that I forget about the light.  
  
All right, I can hear you laughing even from down here. I’ll stop with the poetic rubbish, at least for a while. But you get what I’m trying to say, as you always have. I think now that the only way to move on with my life is not forgetting you, or avoiding you. I just have to stop thinking on what could have been and start thinking on what was and what will be. Because you are gone and I have to accept that. And the only way to have a future as glorious as our past (and it _was_ glorious), is to make a life for myself instead of wishing for the one I lost. So I will try. For you. Because you’d prank me mercilessly if I didn’t and don’t even try to deny it. You always did love getting the last laugh.  
  
Always missing you,  
George.


End file.
